Electronic mail, e.g., e-mail, is a store-and-forward method of writing, sending, receiving and saving messages that has become ubiquitous in today's society, used for both personal and business applications. Email is a system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that can be used in a distributed computing environment over many different platforms and network systems. For example, email can be useful and is applicable to various mainframe, minicomputer or intranet systems allowing users within one organization to send messages to each other in support of workgroup collaboration. Intranet systems may be based on proprietary protocols supported by a particular system vendor, or on the same protocols used on public networks.
Messages are exchanged between hosts using the SMTP using software programs called mail transfer agents (MTA). Users can download their messages from servers with standard protocols such as the POP or IMAP protocols, or using a proprietary protocol specific to Lotus Notes (Lotus Notes is a registered trademark of International Business Machines), as one example. EMail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places.
In a typical email exchange, several steps may take place in order to have an email exchange. For example, the user may select an address from an address book, compose an email and then send the email to the recipient. Once the email is sent, the MUA (Mail User Application) formats the message in a usable format such as, for example, Internet email format and uses the SMTP to send the message to the local MTA. The MTA looks at the destination address provided in the SMTP protocol and the domain name to find the mail exchange servers accepting messages for that domain. The appropriate DNS server responds with a record listing the mail exchange servers for that domain. The message is then sent and stored on the selected mail exchange server. This is typically referred to as point-to-point email. The recipient can then retrieve the email.
In point-to-point emails, the recipient receives the email directly from his or her mail server. Problematic, though, is that the recipient can receive hundreds of emails in the course of a day of over another time period. This can add up to thousands of emails over a course of a week or longer. As such, it becomes very difficult to organize these emails and determine their importance and/or priorities.